Melting+of+Land+Ice

=Did you know...?! = That Antarctica is the biggest piece of land ice on Earth? And if Antarctica continues to melt at the rate it is, before we know it the sea levels could rise around 61 meters! (That's about 200 feet!) =**What //is// Land Ice? **= The largest piece of land ice on the planet, is Antarctica. Antarctica is about 5 million square miles. (about 1.5 times as big as the US!!) There is a difference though between Antarctica, and Sea Ice, AKA, the Arctic. =Why is Land Ice melting? = Because the Earth is warming, the oceans are warming, and because the oceans are warming the ice is melting. Also, the temperature of the air is rising, so the ice is getting hit with higher temperature then normally from both below it and on top of it. "Antarctic waters like the Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas are warming, and as their water temperatures rise they melt the undersides of the ice sheets so the sheets become thinner and the seas intrude farther and farther inland - to melt still more of the ice” (source) =What will happen if all the Land Ice melts? =

As seen in the chart, over the past thousands of years, the levels of the ocean have been rising, drastically. Even a rise of a few feet would cause major problems. Coastal cities would flood; countries that lay close to sea level would be almost completely under water and crops at low elevation would be covered in salt water. This would ruin the soil for further planting. Then this massive amount of stagnant water would be ideal for bug breeding, specifically mosquitoes who could go on to spread things like malaria. (Info Credit)

=Other Information! =

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What does this mean for the animals that live in Antarctica? Adelie penguin's population has been drastically decreasing over the past 20 years. Plants are changing. Because there has been more rain fall as apposed to snow fall over the past few years plants have taken over areas that they were never able to grow before. This would help out some of the animals that live there, if they were not being harmed by the same thing that is making the plants grow in the first place.=====